[bitfolk] Anyone willing to try Direct Debit?

Hi, Is anyone willing to have an experiment with Direct Debit payments through GoCardless.com? To be clear, I haven't finished the panel integration of GoCardless yet, but they do offer a thing they call "Paylinks", which are basically just URLs that can be given out that will set up a DD transaction once you've completed the login (or sign up, for the first one). So they are very similar to PayPal's subscriptions and payment request features. I would find it handy if some people were paying by that method so I can finish off a more seamless integration. Please only reply if: - You're on a monthly contract. So that you will actually generate payment events starting some time soon. - You have a UK bank account, in UK pounds, in a single name, that can have Direct Debits set up on it. Direct Debit is a specific banking feature implemented by UK banks. Not all UK bank accounts can have Direct Debits, but over 70% of UK adults have a bank account that supports them. Bank accounts that are in more than one name may also work but probably require a more lengthy authorisation involving you filling in a paper form and posting it to your bank. So let's not go there yet. - You are willing to create an account at gocardless.com. ABOUT THE DIRECT DEBIT GUARANTEE The Direct Debit guarantee (the thing that we and GoCardless must agree to in order to use Direct Debit) says that: - You can cancel a DD at any time through your bank, if we/GoCardless don't respond for some reason. - If there are any billing errors that we don't put right then you can ask your bank to refund them and you will always be refunded no questions asked. This makes DD safer for you than standing orders. - If there are any changes to the amount or frequency of payments then we have to tell you in advance. ABOUT GOCARDLESS'S PAYLINKS - We can use it for one-off payments and for fixed amount every month/quarter/year, so they can replace PayPal Subscriptions. - We can't yet use it to pre-authorise "certain amount per month/quarter/year" in order to charge you a varying amount. But neither PayPal nor standing orders offer that feature either. When GoCardless is integrated with the panel we will be able to do that. That means that I do anticipate the recurring Paylinks being replaced by pre-auth either through panel or through Paylinks getting that feature, but existing Paylinks will still continue to work. So for example if you order a £10.79/mo service then at the moment we could send you a Paylink that extracts £10.79/mo from your bank account to ours. In future we would rather set you up to pre-authorise *a maximum* of £10.79/mo instead. Then if your account holds credit so that your bill becomes less than £10.79 we would only charge you the exact correct amount, instead of leaving the credit on your BitFolk account. So in terms of risk involved in being a guinea pig, it seems quite unlikely that we could screw it up and double charge you or anything, but if we did then you definitely could sort it out without our involvement. More likely is that you might pay and we might not notice, which we would obviously fix as soon as we became aware. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED.. If you're interested then do let me know off-list. What will then happen is that next time your bill is due for payment you'll be sent a link to pay it via GoCardless. If you currently have a PayPal subscription then this will be cancelled by us and a recurring DD will be used instead. If you don't have a PayPal subscription you should state whether you want a one-off Paylink sent every time or else a Paylink for a recurring DD. If you currently have a standing order, we can't easily tell, so you should cancel it after we've confirmed to you that a DD is set up. IF YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED... If you're not interested then just ignore this. All existing payment methods will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future. DD is much cheaper for us than PayPal though. ANY QUESTIONS.. Please ask on-list or to support(a)bitfolk.com if you prefer. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting